'Nothing I could do'

Mother finds few resources to help with runaway teen

Mother finds few resources to help with runaway teen

December 03, 2006|ALICIA GALLEGOS Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- When her 14-year-old son ran away the first time, Donna Horne did what many parents would do: She called police. The single mother hoped officers would quickly catch up with the teen, who left in a huff during an argument with his mom. After filling out a runaway report, police said they would keep an eye out for the teenager, and the worried mother waited for news. But Garrett Horne had taken a train to Michigan City, where he lived previously with his father, and was eventually found with old friends. The teen spent a short time in a Michigan City detention facility after he was found, and Horne picked him up, hoping again the story would end there. Instead, the mother's ordeal of dealing with a runaway child and what she says was little help to curb the behavior was just beginning. Shortly after returning to his mother's home in South Bend, Garrett was gone again. Horne, a social worker who had moved with her younger daughter to South Bend the year before, spent countless hours on the phone and in person with police, the Frederick N. Thomas Juvenile Justice Center, her son's school, friends and family. It seemed everywhere she turned, a door closed in her face. Horne believed officers did little to find her son, and she was upset that the JJC wouldn't detain him. The school couldn't do much except be on alert that he was missing, and his friends "conveniently" hadn't seen him. "The JJC, police, school, they had no effect," Horne said. "I saw with my own eyes there was nothing I could do." And Garrett soon realized that few repercussions followed after he left home. "I thought the first time after I got caught, I'd get locked up," the then-14-year-old said months later. "If I had got locked up, I probably wouldn't have (kept doing) it." Horne wondered whether it was going to take her son turning violent, delving into worse trouble or becoming a victim himself before someone took the situation seriously. She feared it was only a matter of time before officers were knocking on her door. It was. "It didn't have to be this way," she now says. A 'silent crisis' Running away is one of the most overlooked and underdocumented problems in the country, Maureen Blaha says. One of every seven children will run away from home before the age of 18, and an estimated 446,700 run every year, according to a report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "Running away is a silent crisis," says Blaha, executive director of the National Runaway Switchboard. "I don't think people realize what a crisis it is." More than a third of the children who run away leave more than once, the NCMEC report says, not including the estimated 12,800 who escape from juvenile facilities annually. In Indiana, the number of runaways has increased in the last year, according to annual FBI statistics. In 2005, 3,761 children were recorded as running away, compared with 3,576 in 2004, reports say. "This is a hard population to get our arms around," Blaha says. "Parents don't always report kids running away, but the numbers are staggering." In South Bend, police records indicate that runaway numbers have gone up in the last year, and St. Joseph County authorities stress that the dilemma remains consistent. In 2005, a total of 575 runaway reports were made in South Bend, an increase of 37 since 2004. JJC numbers show that in 2005, 537 runaways were reported, down one from the previous year. But don't forget, experts say, the "throwaway" children. The term refers to the estimated 127,100 children each year who are directly told to leave the household or who have caretakers who make no effort to recover the child after they've run away, according to the NCMEC. It's a label that counters the traditional perception of running away, Washington High School social worker Mary Lahey says, and she believes "it has gotten much worse." "We have an awful lot of children living with neither parent," she says. "We've got an awful lot of homeless children. They're just bouncing from one place to another. "Is that running away?" An estimated 59,200 "throwaway" children are without a secure place to stay while on the run, the NCMEC reports, and the often-abandoned group is far less likely to ever return home. The blame game During one of the multiple times Garrett was missing from home, the 14-year-old returned to school at Jackson Intermediate Center. A school resource officer learned that the teen was in the building and promptly confronted him, dropping him off at home. Police say resource officers at middle schools must contact parents or guardians and let them know if their runaway has been found at school. Horne was at work, but Garrett was met at his house by his aunt. He stayed only 30 minutes, changed clothes and left again."There were no consequences," Horne says. Although parents easily direct anger to authorities when their children run away, school and police officials say a lack of options also frustrates them. School resource officers are usually notified of a student runaway and are asked to be on the lookout, Lahey said, adding that sometimes teachers may not know a student has run away unless told by administrators. But officers can't do much more than transport a runaway after they're found. After a runaway report is made, police enter the missing child into the National Crime Information Center system and alert on-duty officers of the runaway's description and possible locations. Some police departments, like Mishawaka, have an officer who specializes in searching for runaways, but a lack of manpower and resources means police can't spend entire shifts looking for missing teens, according to Mishawaka Police Capt. Pasquale Rulli Jr. "I always tell parents, you need to go out pounding on doors yourself, we're not going to look like (actors) look on TV," he said. Once police find a runaway, they can either take them home, to the JJC, or to the Safe Station, a local housing place for runaways. Running away is a status offense, explains South Bend Police Capt. Phil Trent, meaning the action is only illegal because of the offender's age. "We take the report and assist in locating them, but then we turn it over to the JJC," he said. "From there it's up to those authorities." The chance that JJC will actually keep the runaway is low, according to South Bend Sgt. Marian Nicks-Walker, who handles many runaway cases. Lack of bed space and more serious juvenile offenders make it hard for the facility to accommodate runaways, authorities explain. JJC officials do evaluate each case and deem whether the child is a danger to themselves or the community, sometimes holding them for 24 hours, according to Chuck Whetstone, JJC director of probation. "We have only a 90-bed facility," Whetstone says. "We'd have 300 kids in here if we took every runaway who was refusing to do chores." Children who repeatedly run away have the possibility of being placed on probation, Whetstone said, and adolescents with three or four status offenses are sometimes referred to the Department of Correction for private placement. For the most part, runaways return home on their own, according to police. In fact, officers often struggle with parents who fail to follow up after the child is found, leaving the child lingering in the system. Most kids are discovered within 48 hours, Trent says, and back home within 72. More than 90 percent of runaway cases are reportedly resolved. "It's very common for us to discover the child has returned home by making a followup phone call," he said. No easy answers So what can be done to reduce the number of adolescents running away? And what control do parents and officials have? Horne, like other parents might believe, thinks a couple of nights in the JJC might have shaken Garrett up enough for him to stop running. But others think running away is anything but a crime and should not be treated as such. The action is a "cry for help," Blaha says, and the reason a child is running needs to be examined first. Either way, experts say, ignoring the problem altogether often leads to further delinquency down the road. In Garrett's case, the lack of consequence for running away led to a juvenile record and a home detention bracelet. Coming Monday: Reasons as varied as runaways